Riffing off the $200 plywood and rubber band supersonic trebuchet was where I was going - e.g. if you used higher quality materials and a few thousand dollars, could you launch a 1kg steel ball into orbit? A 500g payload? Could you use ceramics for ablative shielding designed to break open in orbit, hatching a useful cubesat type device?

The idea of hobbyist level engineering achieving orbital escape velocities is the scary bit.

The design space equations used by the trebuchet guy could answer the questions, I think.